Wow, 4 weeks of feeling really good. Woo-who!! My living room/dining room got finished and it looks great. It now looks like an adult lives here and I’m not squatting in some college dorm.
But, Sunday I took a turn for the worse and now I’m back to struggling again.
It all started on Friday when my daughters were coming to visit for a belated Mother’s Day. I wanted the apt to look perfect (can you say O-C-D?) so I was going crazy all day cleaning and puttering around. When you have OCD everything has to be just so or you can’t sit down and relax. So every time I did sit down I saw something that wasn’t aligned right or were just slightly out of place so I had to keep on getting up to “fix it”. By the time the girls arrived I was already tired.
I had told my eldest daughter that she could bring her cat as I know she worries about him when she asks her roommates to watch him because they forget to feed him. So in came Toby,… her un-fixed male cat. We knew very quickly that this was not going to be a good situation. To make a long story short,… my cat (a fixed female) and her cat did NOT get along at all and her cat started spraying everywhere. We had no choice but to get him out of there. So less than 2 hours after they all arrived, I was driving Michelle back to Barrie 2 hours away. I was sorry our visit was cut short as I rarely get to see her lately but Toby had to go. I left at 2 in the morning and didn’t get back till 5 in the morning. I was exhausted. But instead of going to bed, my OCD kicked in. I could not rest until this apartment was scrubbed clean. So that’s what I did. I started cleaning. I finally got so tired I took a nap and didn’t wake up until Hayley woke me at noon.
My OCD was really “pulling” me that afternoon. All my mind could think of was cleaning my apartment because in my mind it was totally contaminated. But I forced myself to spend the afternoon with Hayley. But once she left at dinner-time I went crazy cleaning,… scrubbing,… disinfecting,… spraying,… and then starting the whole procedure all over again. Because in my mind, it still wasn’t clean enough. I had to kill the actual germs. I knew I wasn’t being logical but I couldn’t stop myself. So I just kept cleaning. Only taking small breaks to rest. I did this for 3 days strait. I stayed up most of the nights cleaning as well. By the time Wednesday rolled around I knew I was out of control and had to stop. I fell into bed in an exhausted crumpled mess and slept for the next 25 hours. Not waking up until Thursday at noon.
Luckily I already had an app’t booked with my SW for Friday. During that appointment I told her everything. She immediately called the psychiatrist to book an appointment with her. And then she threw out the dreaded “B” word. If I was up for two nights in a row cleaning then maybe I was having bipolar swings. Grrrrrr,…. Not this again. I get so frustrated with everyone trying to figure out if I do or don’t have bipolar. At this point I don’t even care if it’s yes or no but instead let’s just fix what’s going on with me right now which is the OCD taking control. I’m so exhausted right now I can’t clean anymore even though my mind is telling me I have to or the germs will take over. My body is in pain from all the moving of furniture. I ache from head to toe and my shoulders are on fire from the pain. And yet my mind is still telling me to clean. It’s just so illogical. But I can’t stop it.
So today and yesterday I have done nothing. I can’t. I’m too tired. Too sore. But most of all,… I have just felt too depressed. I’m back to the “just do 3 things today” if that’s all you can do,… (On my depressed days, I force myself to do 3 things no matter how small or insignificant as sometimes it kick starts me to do more) But today all I did was watch TV.
I’m also dealing with my old addiction urges right now. My body is in so much pain that all I want to do is take drugs to numb out so I don’t have to feel that pain or the depression. But I can’t do that anymore. The urge is great though. It made me realize that it is true. Once an addict ~ always an addict. It’s been well over a year and a half that I have been clean of my prescription drug abuse and I thought I would never miss it. Not so. Today my mind wants it. But that’s not going to happen. That would just be too slippery a slope to go down for someone who has my past. So drug-free it is. (Ice packs and A-535 are in total use though)
So as you can see it’s been quite an eventful week. I didn’t know whether to write about how controlling my OCD can be to me at times but in the end, it’s another issue I deal with.
I still have my kitchen left to paint. But right now I am finding that way too over-whelming. So I think I will give that a miss for the time being. This poor old girls mind and body needs a break for a bit. But once I do start feeling better it will be back to the decorating. I refuse to give up just because I have ‘obstacles’. I may not get things done the way most people do,… but in the end,… I usually do get it done.